by Teri Ong
It is no secret to my friends and family; I am a baseball fan. It probably started when I was a youngster and Harmon Killebrew was the hometown hero on the Minnesota Twins. My brother even won a drawing for a baseball glove signed by Harmon in a contest sponsored by Oscar Meyer Hotdogs– a one-time stadium favorite. Or it could have started when my husband got rid of our TV during the first summer of our marriage. It was then that I began listening to Denver Bears baseball games on KOA radio. Sometimes we would go to one of the Triple A games at Mile High Stadium, park outside the parking lot fence, carry our own snack foods, and have a fun “date night” for less than $5.00.
When the Rockies came to town, date nights got more expensive– a LOT more expensive– but bargain “four pack” nights became a fond family memory pretty quickly. We were even there when Todd Helton got the famous hit in the ninth inning to send the Rockies into their World Series run. They won the National League pennant on our youngest daughter’s birthday that year. Unfortunately, even though they swept all of their playoff series, they were swept in the World Series. 
In 2017 they finally made it to the playoffs again, but they were knocked out in the first round. But, as the saying goes, there’s always next year.
I know just how they feel.
Last summer I was SO close to winning the World Series of household fix-up’s– having EVERY room in my house as liveable space [as opposed to being garage annexes of various descriptions]. By “every,” I really mean “including the back porch.”
When we first bought the house, the back porch had been converted into office space for the previous pastor. My husband used it that way until the church renovations were completed and he could move into office space over there. Then it became a combination craft storage space, freezer/pantry room, mud room for all of the sporting goods and winter paraphernalia of all the children– in other words– it became messy storage. Years later we did a renovation project and installed an L-shaped banquette with deep storage bins for craft stuff and lots of shelves for games and dvd’s. For two years it was literally a dog house; now it is an occasional doggy motel. Except for a few brief months when we used the room to house a needy student, and another few months when it housed our college-age daughter who needed to move back home, it has mostly been– messy storage. That’s why after 32 years, the back porch is the BIG prize.
2017 was going to be my winning year. I had the best team ever. My daughter and son-in-law, who do fix-ups for a living, came in and spent several weeks scraping 40-year old popcorn off the ceilings, putting up new crown molding, installing new flooring on the whole main floor. We took up old carpet on the stairs and did new laminate stair treads. We installed new light and fan fixtures. We repainted everything. We tiled the tub and sink surrounds. We put bead board on the kitchen and bathroom walls. You get the idea. It was a big job. We painted everything and installed new shelving in the “back porch” room so I could use it as a music room.
In order to do all of this, we had to take everything out of all the rooms we re-did. I was ruthless; I got rid of several dumpster loads of junk and trunk loads of recyclables. Things were looking great by the middle of the summer. I felt like I was sitting on top of my division with a seven game lead over the opponents.
But a lot of good teams hit the skids after the All Star break. We had company for a week, and then I had to help my son drive back to seminary in North Carolina. Then it was time to get ready for my husband’s 50th class reunion in Indiana. I had lost a few games in the standings by then, but I was still in contention for a meaningful September (which means everything in place before the start of the new school year).
But my team hit another slump! We had turned the house my mother lived in at the end of her life into a rental property. When our first long-term, non-family tenants moved in, they said it would be fine to leave some things down in the cellar. The cellar is only good for storage, and they said they didn’t need the space. I had only postponed the inevitable.
It would be convenient to stop at my sister’s house in Iowa on our way to Indiana, to deliver things that had belonged to my mother. My sister said she would take all of my mother’s extensive library of Christian books. Great! That would help me free up a lot of space. I could also throw in several boxes of bric-a-brac and memorabilia, extra linens, and miscellany. That would certainly put me back on top of my game.
We got about half of Mom’s remaining stuff out so I could take as much as possible to my sister. But all of the things we didn’t take, now had to be stored in my house somewhere. The perfect hiding place was in my son’s room. After all, he was in North Carolina. I stacked all of the plastic buckets of old family photos and scrap books (some with photos going back to the 1880’s) in his room. I knew it was a temporary move– like getting replacement players for the ones on the D.L. But what else could I do? At least my back porch music room was still clear and usable. I was definitely still in contention for the big prize in September.
Then we hit the skids! When we started negotiating with our tenants about raising the rent to a more fair market value, they said they would like to have the cellar space if they were going to be paying so much more per month. It was like losing all the Blake Street Bombers in the same game! I would have to get everything out of the basement and bring it to my house. And not only that, my son was coming home so he could work – for the entire spring semester and summer! Good-bye invisible storage! Good-bye World Series of household fix-ups!
We cleared it all out in early December, after my son got home from seminary, and after I moved all of the boxes of photos in his room to the– you guessed it– “music” room. Then we brought everything in the rental house to our house. It filled up an entire full-size van with the seats out. It came into my dining room right before Christmas! I had lost in the first round of the playoffs!
I spent all of Christmas break sorting and throwing and piling. I went through several large plastic buckets of photo books– the kind that hold the prints from one roll of film (remember those?). There were hundreds of them. My mother never made a single set of prints. She always made two or three from each roll of film. Then there were all of the photos we had taken of her grandchildren that she always asked for.
Then there were buckets of all of the coloring book pages lovingly colored by grandchildren and presented to her as love tokens. Then there were buckets of little craft items lovingly preserved, going all the way back to the popsicle stick lattice with the plastic orchid that I had made for her in a first grade VBS program at our church in 1961.
About half way through the sorting process I called my sister to ask her about certain items and whether I could dispose of them. NO! She wanted me to preserve them and bring them to Iowa the next time we pass that way.
As I passed through my “music” room this morning, I looked with chagrin at the large pile of boxes of decor filling the south end that will be used for an orchestra gala this weekend. I looked at the pile of buckets destined for my sister’s and brother’s garages filling the north end. Then I remembered– It is only three weeks until the pitchers report for spring training. Hope springs eternal. There’s always next year!
